My Thoughts on WWE Great American Bash 2008

This past Sunday, WWE presented the Great American Bash from the Nassau Coliseum. The main selling points for this event were Triple H defending the WWE Championship against former World Heavyweight Champion, Edge, CM Punk defending his World Heavyweight Championship against Batista and John Cena taking on JBL in a New York City Parking Lot Brawl.

The opening match saw new tag team champions being crowned as Miz and Morrison dropped the titles to Ryder and Hawkins when Hawkins covered Jesse to win the gold. Not a bad match, Jesse looked better in this match than he has done in a while, personally, I didn’t see the Edge Clones winning as they had been pretty much nothing but jobbers, Miz and Morrison were kept strong since neither man was involved in the decision, Festus looked dominating, Finlay and Hornswoggle did nothing in the match and personally, they could have used Hornswoggle to take the pin (and get him some sympathy) or just take them out of the match completely. As I said, overall a pretty good match.

Match number two saw Shelton Benjamin defeating Matt Hardy to become the new United States championship. I think Will said it best in the roundtable discussion when he said that it’s good to be black in WWE at the moment. Hopefully this will lead to a main event push for Matt Hardy over on ECW and hopefully him trading it in for the ECW championship. The match itself again was quite good, Benjamin looked motivated and was a lot more watchable, as I didn’t see him botch a single spot which is rare for Benjamin in recent times.

The next match saw ECW champion Mark Henry retaining his title against Tommy Dreamer in one of the most expected and uninteresting swerves in the history of wrestling. Colin Delaney looks less threatening than my 15 year old brother and for someone who has been through feuds with Raven and the Sandman why would Dreamer care about Delaney? I know the whole point of wrestling is the suspension of belief, but honestly, Colin Delaney looks like a skinny child, Tommy should just kill him with ease. That is the only way I would ever believe this. Boring match, but what do you expect from something involving Mark Henry.

Now we get onto the easy match of the night. WWE did it right here by giving Chris Jericho the win as every other match these 2 have had, Michaels has took the win. Jericho working on the back at first made no sense really, I was talking about this with others and just wondered why he wouldn’t target the most blatant injury that his opponent has (the eye)? Well, after failing to win by submission (with the least painful looking Walls of Jericho I have ever seen, honestly, Michaels just had his knee bent, it didn’t look like there was any pressure being applied at all, but I digress). After a while, (and me saying to the people I was discussing it with how it would be a cool ending with a ref stoppage), Jericho went to work on the eye. He kept beating on it, and after a while the ref would call for the bell and give Jericho a well needed win on PPV (when did he last win on PPV since his return? Before now I don’t think he had).

Now we get to the Divas Championship match as Michelle McCool won the title to become the first WWE Divas Champion in history. I still think that belt is fucking hideous. Pretty standard match, Natalya looked good locking in the sharpshooter and a nice looking surfboard stretch on McCool. Finish came when McCool locked in a Heel Hook and Natalya tapped. Will someone also tell JR to stop saying “Natalya by name, naughty by nature”, it is one of the gayest lines ever, and I question if he got it from Adamle (being that they both work on Tuesdays now).

Post match, Jericho comes out and tells us that this night was historic as it was the last Shawn Michaels match ever, apparently Michaels has a detached retina. He does seem to forget Michaels returned from a broken back? And in his return match, he was hit in the back with a sledgehammer and got out of a wheelchair a few weeks later?Shawn Michaels is almost as indestructible as John Cena.

Up next was CM Punk defending his championship against Batista. First of all, since winning the belt, Punk has been booked like a bitch. He was dominated by JBL, he beat Snitsky convincingly, but then again, its Snitsky, he was dominated by Kane before sneaking a count out win. Now he is made to look like Batista’s little bitch boy yet again. He was dominated here, and honestly, I can’t wait for WWE to just take the title from him now (and I am a big fan of CM Punk). I thought him winning the gold after being a jobber with a briefcase for months would change his fortunes, but how wrong was I. Typical Batista match before Kane ran out and kicked Batista then chokeslammed Punk. This lead to a bullshit double DQ finish in another WWE championship match (note to Mitch, see, it’s WWE that does this pretty much monthly, not TNA, before you go whining about that too). So CM Punk once again looks like a fluke champion. It’s like watching Rey Mysterio’s championship reign all over again.

New York City Parking Lot Brawl is up next. This was heavily edited which is obvious since we get various camera angles where there aren’t cameras, and there was some stupid shit in this match. JBL is stood on the roof of a car and just so happens to be the car directly opposite the one Cena was in? Cena is thrown face first through a window and somehow doesn’t bleed from the head (although he bled from his arm somehow). Then we have Cena in a car which JBL pours petrol on and lights (before 2 stagehands run in seconds later with fire extinguishers). Then we get Cena ramming a car (which JBL is in) with a forklift truck doing absolutely no damage to his opponent, before he lifts the car up and drives it out into the arena giving us the first part of the match which was happening live. From here we see Cena dominate JBL before going for an FU off the stage onto the car he brought out, only to be reversed and thrown through the windscreen. JBL wins. Considering Cena bores me, I spent most of this match counting my rice. When I watched it through again, it bored me again. Cena bores me, JBL bores me.

Finally, we have Triple H defending the WWE title against Edge. Funny thing was seeing how WWE’s fans vote on these text votes and shows the WWE’s main demographic is when 55% sympathised more with Edge than Vickie (who he “cheated” on). Pretty good match, although I fell asleep during it live (not due to this match, but due to it being 3:30am and having watched a Cena/JBL match before), but after watching it again, this was another good match (as could be expected by these 2). The wedding planner running in was stupid, but Vickie coming down and getting cheered was fun to see, as was the clothesline on random Diva Search girl #132. Edge spearing Vickie was a bit predictable and Triple H hits the Pedigree for the win. As I said, good match.

Overall, we had good (Trips/Edge, Jericho/Michaels), bad (Henry/Dreamer, Punk/Batista) and boring (Cena/JBL). Some surprising results (Shelton winning as well as the Edge Clones winning) and some expected (Trips/Edge, Henry/Dreamer). If you can see it for free, then I would watch it for those matches, if you would have to pay $40, I’d leave it and get the DVD, who knows, you may have enjoyed Cena/JBL. And in closing, this is directed to Mitch since he will probably try and claim I’m going off a report, I watched the show live (and then watched the bits I missed thanks to Sky+, so I have seen it first hand)